And throw that fisheye eliminator away, it will cause nothing but grief on future jobs. Just think about this, any overspray that ended up on the garage floor or anywhere else in the shop has the fisheye eliminator in it. This means every spec of it is now a possible contaminant for future jobs. You may actually need the eliminator again for spraying the bed unless you clean the garage very well so your air movement doesn't pick up any of the contaminated particles. I've never seen solvent popping that bad or had any happen that fast, but I have seen millions of fisheyes appear when spraying in contaminated air- start a diesel up near your air intake or if a squirt of armor all gets sprayed upstream and this kind of thing will happen instantaneously. I hope your next spray goes well.

With the limited information and without seeing the shop it is darn hard to say anything. Barry's info on solvent pop would cover that subject.

Let's go down with the most common.

1. Solvent pop (that is why I mentioned it) it can happen pretty soon. How soon did this occur? Hard to say, one mans "as soon as I applied the clear" is another mans ten or fifteen minutes later. It still could be solvent pop. Look close to see if there is a "volcano" look to the craters formed by the solvents rushing out of the "film" on the top of the clear.

2. Contaimination, DIRT, yep, "bondo" dust can look exactly the same as discribed. As soon as a nice coat is applied the top starts to "film" from the solvents evaporating. The tiny dust particle (too small to see without looking REAL close) falls on the "film" and sets there a while before it falls thru, wham, a "fish eye". These can be seen if you look real close. The spec is sometimes seen at the bottom of the crater. Plus, the top of the crater doesn't have the "volcano" look.

Any other contaiminant such as a wax or something, very unlikely. These flaws appear only on the top surface or mostly on the top surface.

If it was something in the line, water or whatever, it would be all over. This is one of the first misconceptions with "contaiminants". How in the heck could it be only in one area if it was "in the gun"?

Ive been told by paint reps for years that fisheye killer was silicone and just having it in the shop could cause more fisheyes, like fighting fire with fire.Use it if you absolutely have to then get rid of it. And like baddbob said clean everything afterwords.

Most painters do not really know the difference between the two. Before you throw things at me read on.
If you paint for a big shop and the paint rep comes in from the factory not the jobber and you say I’m having a fisheye problem, even if he does know the difference do you really think he is going to say no that is solvent pop? If he does say that it now goes from user error to product problem and he does not need that hassle. Thats why you don't know!

First of all fisheyes rarely give you problems in spots, such as a 6” strip down the center of the hood or just the top of doors or fenders, fisheyes will consume the whole panel, so if the top of the door is fisheyes and center down is ok, its not fisheyes with rare exception.

First stage of a solvent pop.
Looks like dirt in hood and top surfaces of car the little speck can be black, white or gray depending how much water the iso took on. These are usually spaced at random so painter thinks it trash and no big deal.
These are caused by unsealed activator, water in line, watering down the booth floor and over atomization on a humid day.
Second stage.

That same speck of dirt with a ¼ moon fisheye coming off the speck of dirt. Same causes as above but more serious water problem.
These can be a full fledge the size of a bad fisheye but the speck of dirt will still be in center. Wetting floor on a rainy day and using a 1.3 tip?

Third type of solvent pop.
Is baby pinholes to full blown fisheye size. These are caused by trapped solvent in primer or sealer loading or solvent trapped in base is the most common and happens the most with black dark blues and dark reds or colors with poor hiding and 6 or more coats to cover. These can show up in clear on first coat as pinheads (gassing) or in the second coat as full blown fisheyes. 90 times out of 100 it happens on second coat of clear within minutes after you spray it.

A true fisheye will almost always go through the clear and leave a small center of the base exposed, solvent pop, there will always be clear covering the base in center.

ANYTIME you get what looks like fisheyes on second coat of clear its solvent pop.

Hope this helps, I keep it short as this is an hour subject to explain in class setting.

Convinced that it was the deference in temperature between the room and metal, trapping solvents giving my the major solvent pop......

Today we had better wormer weather...I didn’t bother turning on the heater. The room temp along with everything in it was at a steady 65*

I skipped the sealer, and applied 6 light-medium coats of base, with a 45 minute wait between coats, and an hour and a half wait between the last base coat and clear.

The clear was mixed 4:1:1 and not wanted to take any chances, since I used the fish eye eliminator on the front end, I also added a couple drops of it for the bed. Laid down 2 medium-wet coats of clear, with a 15 min. “tack” time in between.

Everything else was done exactly the way the front end was done......I used the same gun, compressor, line, filters, paint products, types of mixing cups, stir sticks..........well you get the point.

It came out GREAT........nice gloss, no runs, and only the minimal of orange peel (like oem jobs) I will still be giving it a light cutting and buffing to match the front end.........which I start cutting tomorrow.....all day tomorrow

This was definitely a bad case of the “planets aligning just right” to give me a major case of solvent pop.

I want to thank everyone who responded to this post. All your comments and ideas were greatly appreciated.

Hey this is the first time using this, I have exactly the same story as the topic opener. The problem is the tack coat. If you do exactly the same thing again it will turn out the same way. It looks like dust in the clear. When it happened to me, I blocked it down the next day and put on two medium wet coats and it turned out perfect, nothing else was changed, temp, hose, gun nothing. I think it's because the clear is cheap, the reducer is cheap etc. This does not happen with expensive clear!

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the Hot Rod Forum : Hotrodders Bulletin Board forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name (usually not your first and last name), your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.